Leicestershire County Cricket Club
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Leicestershire County Cricket Club is a county cricket club based at Leicester. Home games are played at Grace Road, which is named after W.G. Grace. Previous grounds were at Aylestone Road, Leicester, at Hinckley, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Ashby-de-la-Zouch and Coalville inside the traditional county boundaries, and at Uppingham and Oakham over the border into Rutland.
History
Joining the County Championship in the big expansion of the competition in 1895, Leicestershire's first 70 years were largely spent in lower table mediocrity, with few notable exceptions. In 1953, the motivation of secretary-captain Charles Palmer lifted the side fleetingly to third place, but most of the rest of the 1950s was spent propping up the table, or thereabouts.Change came in the late 1950s with the recruitment of the charismatic Willie Watson at the end of a distinguished career with England and Yorkshire. Watson's run gathering sparked the home-grown Maurice Hallam into becoming one of England's best opening batsmen. In bowling, Leicestershire had an erratically successful group of seamers in Terry Spencer, Brian Boshier, John Cotton and Jack van Geloven, plus the spin of John Savage. But the change that finally brought success was in the captaincy: first Tony Lock, the former England and Surrey spinner who had galvanised Western Australia took the team to the unprecedented position of runners up in the Championship. Then his successor, Ray Illingworth, again from Yorkshire, instilled self-belief to the extent that the county took its first title in 1975.
Club honours
- 2004 Twenty20 Cup Champions.
- 1998 County Champions.
- 1996 County Champions.
- 1985 Benson & Hedges Cup Champions.
- 1977 Sunday League Champions.
- 1975 County Champions and Benson & Hedges Cup Champions.
- 1974 Sunday League Champions.
- 1972 Benson & Hedges Cup Champions.
County Captains
- Charles Palmer (1950-1957)
- Willie Watson (1958-1962)
- Tony Lock (1965-1967)
- Ray Illingworth (1969-1978)
- Ken Higgs (1979)
- Roger Tolchard (1980-1983)
- David Gower
- Peter Willey
- David Gower
- Phillip DeFreitas
- Hylton "HD" Ackerman (2005)
- Jeremy Snape (2006 to date)
Famous players
- Chris Balderstone
- Les Berry
- Dickie Bird
- Paddy Clift
- David Constant
- Hansie Cronje
- Brian Davison
- Phillip DeFreitas
- Barry Dudleston
- David Gower
- Maurice Hallam
- Ken Higgs
- Ray Illingworth
- Tony Lock
- Devon Malcolm
- Norman McVicker
- Phil Simmons
- John Steele
- Roger Tolchard
- Willie Watson
External links
| English first-class cricket clubs |
| Derbyshire | Durham | Essex | Glamorgan | Gloucestershire | Hampshire | Kent | Lancashire | Leicestershire | Middlesex |
| Northamptonshire | Nottinghamshire | Somerset | Surrey | Sussex | Warwickshire | Worcestershire | Yorkshire |
| MCC | Cambridge UCCE | Durham UCCE | Loughborough UCCE | Oxford UCCE |
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